schoolswikiaorg-20200215-history
Inwood Hill Park
It's the last old-growth forest on Manhattan Island. :Some of the trees are so enormous :you can't see the tops of them. :There are footpaths you can follow; :some are long and wide, :some meander so far into the brush that :you really can forget you're in New York City. :I have a love-hate relationship with this place. :I got mugged here in 2001, :not a quarter-mile from my house, :in broad daylight. :I think it was some baby gangster, :an initiate "filling a plate" to show he was down, :since he only grabbed the shoulder of my clothes, :held his itty-bitty knife :about two feet away from my face, :and ran off :with all I had to give up: twelve dollars. :It was the first time in my entire life :I'd been mugged. :A decent record, I think, :for having lived 29 years :in New York City, :Chicago, :Mexico City :and New York City again. :My only scar is :a spookiness about people coming up behind me. :It's also the place where a young woman :was last seen a few summers ago; :where they found her beat-up body. :For those reasons, I no longer go through the forest :alone. :Fortunately, there's no need: :I can usually count on Otto. :Otto and I start out from the fenced-in pebble sea :that is the dog run :and head up into the woods. :We water-ski over to the first hill, :towed by our quasi-twin beagles, Tarney (his) :and Pocha (mine). :The dogs were born two months apart, and share :the markings of the breed, :but that's where the similarities end. :It's absolutely true: dogs and their owners :become more like each other every day. :So, Pocha's gangly energy can barely be contained :in her delight to be with people. :She's affectionate :and seeks to connect all the members :of her pack. :Tarney, on the other hand, takes his time. :Stumpier and shaggier, :acutely aware of everything his senses tell him, :he obeys them above all platitudes :and small talk. :This makes him seem a bit aloof, :but really, he's just taking his job seriously, :having absorbed the wisdom of Otto's years. :In the middle of the first hill, we unleash the hounds. :Pocha races up into the leaves. Tarney starts sniffing things. :Otto and I stroll along, taking in the morning. :Rounding the corner, we follow the dogs up the second hill, :longer than the first, :an embankment on the left and a ravine on the right. :It is late June, already humid and buggy, :but the deep green cools both. :Pocha and I must exude some kind of quickness, :because Otto always asks, "are you in a hurry today?" :I assure him we are not, since I know what will reward my patience: :swarming thickets of red and black raspberries :and memories of Otto's childhood on a farm in Danzig, :or his youth in Canada, :or his life in a New York that passed me by. :My favorites are the ones about trains - :walking the tracks, :jumping from one train to another, :getting on the train that carried him away :from his town forever in order to escape :the advancing Red Army. :At the crest of the second hill, the berries. :We pick and eat; the dogs snuffle and dig. :We continue this way around the bend :Up another hill, along a grassy corridor, :Past a tiny patch of long needle pines that Otto calls :"the little Schwartzwald." :Finally, we veer off to the left and up a final hill :to the cliff that overlooks the highway, the Hudson, and the Palisades. :If you lean out and crane your neck to the right, you can see the bridge. :The dogs run amok in the tall grass of a clearing :where we learn what that little patch of white :on the beagle's tail is for: "It's a flag," says Otto, :and so it is, a beacon bobbing back and forth across the field. :The sun is getting hot, so we try to get the dogs to follow us :back into the shade and down the hill. :Pocha comes bounding over on a good holler or two. :Tarney, however, has fixated on something low in the brush - :a rat, a squirrel, a bird, a grub, it doesn't matter. :He'll stay there until he catches it. :Otto says, "I wanted a dog, but they gave me a beagle instead. :"You'd better go ahead," he adds, "this could take a while." :And so it does, when even after a few more handfuls of berries, :and Pocha's worried forays into the brush to try to flush him out, :Tarney doesn't emerge. :I clip on Pocha's leash, :because she'd never leave those two of her own accord. :Otto gives an "awwwhhh" of sympathy for her, :since on a day like this, a dog shouldn't be on a leash. :"OK, Pochie, OK, OK," he says, as she mugs him for :the cookies she knows he has in his pockets. :He treats her to several, tousling her ears as she bolts them. :"So," Otto says to me, "See you next time." :I have to run and whip Pocha into a frenzy :to help her forget that she's leaving her beloveds behind. :We jog down the hills, through the cool forest :and out onto the blacktop; :reentering the city we never left.